8 posts tagged “bird nest”

The baby birds are gone.  I got a few pictures of them sitting very high in the nest yesterday.  It was the first time they were sitting like normal birds.  I was finally able to get a real count on them and realized there were only four (there were five eggs)... If the nest stays empty through the weekend, I'll take it down for Elias to keep.  Birds like to recycle nests so i want to grab it before the birds do.

I have the final image of them sitting high in the nest that I'll upload in a little while...

My little guys... they were just babies and now they're out in the world. :o)

::UPDATE for images::

05252007a

05252007b

Rubber_soul_b000002uao copy

"I was alone.  This bird had flown."
As soon as I saw them sitting tall in the nest I thought it looked like the Rubber Soul cover... the lyrics fit almost too well this morning :o)

BUSY!!!  I feel so busy lately that I barely know where to start or have time to post about it... Work is super busy, which is always good!  Laura and I have been married eight years today and we're going to Walton's Mountain Schuyler, VA this weekend.  We've been thinking lately about Charlottesville a lot and it certainly doesn't help that Laura's been Walton's obsessed for a long time now :o)  This will be the first time in TWO years that we have both spent the night away from the kids.  Which also, by default, mean the first time in two years we've slept through the night together AND the first night in two years that we have not shared our room with one of the kids at SOME point in the night.

Baby birds at Day 11 (two days ago)  The Mother Bird didn't spend the night in the nest that night... I'm not really sure why.  I was reading that warblers can have a second brood as soon as 15 days after the first one... This is a little soon for her to be away from her babies... but who knows.  I've been trying to follow the parents to see if they're building or watching another nest... I haven't seen one yet.

Baby bird at Day 13 (today)  The baby fuzz is almost all gone, they are alert and a couple times I've seen them hovering a little bit over the nest learning to use their wings.

Father bird keeping a VERY close watch... I usually wait until they are away before standing on a chair to get a closer look... he swooped by a couple times while taking pictures to make sure I wasn't harming them.  Mother bird seems to be a lot more chill with me.

KIDS

Cute kid moment I thought I would share... They've been getting along STRANGELY well lately.

Okay, so i figured out how to finally get an angle... no more crappy laptop pictures... promise :o)

Photo 67

You can see the beaks and eyes now in the images... their eyes are still shut and they are a lot fuzzier.  I have only seem them moving around once... just opening and shutting their mouths.  I've noticed that there is absolutely two birds sharing the responsibility of watching after them and feeding them.  Is it the father bird? I should research some more on that.

The eggs hatched yesterday.  Our persistence seems to have paid off too... The Mother bird is always around but doesn't seem to mind us looking at the babies and being around her nest.   I haven't been able to get a good picture yet, the lighting has ust been wrong and the only camera i can snake up there (no pun intended) is the macbook camera which needs to be just right.  anyways, i've posted the best picture i have right now.  they're fuzzy little balls right now all huddled and sleeping together.

Photo 65

These are the egg pictures from a couple weeks ago, when there was only four and then the final five.

Working until 3am last night affords me the opportunity to post this morning before starting other projects.

/// I have a portrait session at the US Naval Academy tonight with a Midshipmen.  I've shot countless weddings there but this will be my first Midshipmen portraits.  She knows that though and is getting a discount due to my specific inexperience.  The Naval Academy is so steeped in tradition, a portrait session is standard fare and there are specific poses as specific parts of the Academy that need to be captured as well as some standard creativeness.

/// We're definitely building a fire pit in a clearing in our woods next week.  We've talked about it for a couple years now but we just need to do it.  We have the rocks for the outside of the pit, two kids ready to clear the area and TONS of downed trees in the woods just begging to become firewood.  Fire is good.

/// Nature is a great teacher.  Did you know that birds lay eggs at different times?  Me neither.  I posted a picture of our bird's nest a couple days back with four eggs in the nest.  I check on it while the mother bird was away yesterday and now there are five eggs!  My first thought was another type of bird laid an egg in the her nest for her to raise, but the new egg is exactly like the others.  I found that I can see into the nest in between the planks if i'm on top of the deck.  (These pictures are using the macbook's camera like a periscope to see inside)  I was able to see how really small the eggs are!  The eggs are maybe one inch in length.  I'd like to get a picture of the mom but she always flies away.  I hope that by being in her face all the time she will be less aggressive when the babies come.

Photo 51

/// One of the studios I work for gave me a key and alarm code yesterday.  I've maybe worked for him for like 30 hours so far but we've clicked really well.  I spent the day there by myself designing albums yesterday.  The only downfall of the studio?  Endless amounts of chocolate.  I have little willpower when it comes to chocolate, especially dark chocolate which was on tap yesterday.

Photo 50

Dole Sticker Animado

/// I've been taking Zyrtec for two weeks now.  My allergies are getting increasingly worse.  It's from last years supply, I wonder if that has something to do with it.  Last year I was able to cut back to taking zyrtec three times a week and was still able to mow the grass... I really hope to get there again.  We took a 30 minute walk last night and I came back inside for a two hour allergy attack.  I'm trying a neti pot this year also.  Hopefully that will help clear out some allergens as well.  I need to order more zyrtec today from those crazy Canadians with their loose prescription laws.  Hopefully it will get here before i run out.

Neti-pot-1

...Work starts, now.

I had a post in me this morning, but now i forget what it was.

I open up firefox and my gmail and there's letters missing in firefox... ( 0 1 B V and probably more wouldn't display... what?  so i close it down and open it back up... same thing.  I update all my extensions and disable greasemonkey... now it's fine.  I'm guess one of my greasemonkey scripts went crazy.  Another project for another time.  i LOVE greasemonkey but i don't think i'm really using any scripts for anything productive... We'll see.

But while dealing with all this, FIVE ants have crawled on the laptop... What?!  So not only do we have ants and need to take care of it immediately, they are either inside the computer and crawling out or they are on the couch i'm sitting on right now and crawling up.

Not good.

What's equally not good but neat right now is there is a bird that has nested and laid eggs in the support beams of our deck.  We live in an apartment under the deck, so we're playing right next to the nest.  The mother bird seems fine right now, but when her babies hatch she might get REALLY nasty and overly protective.  Last year we moved the nest before she laid eggs.. this year we didn't catch it in time.  For now, the kids are enjoying it.  The nest is in a spot that there's no way i could look up into the nest.  She was out of the nest for a while yesterday so I climbed up there with the macbook using the built in camera as a periscope to see if there were eggs.  (All macbook pictures, ignore the quality!)

Photo 35

Photo 36

Photo 45